Former nun Nora Wall is expected to be granted a certificate of miscarriage of justice in the Court of Criminal Appeal today.
The Director of Public Prosecutions has already indicated he will not oppose the application.
This leaves the way clear for the court to issue such a certificate, and for Ms Wall to sue the State for damages arising out of her conviction in 1999 of rape of a young woman in her care.
Ms Wall is a former nun and was administrator of St Michael's Child Care Centre in Waterford when the girl was a resident there in the 1980s.
In 1999 she, along with a homeless, alcoholic, petty criminal, and sufferer from mental illness, Pablo McCabe, were convicted of rape of the girl over a decade previously, when the girl was ten.
She was the first woman here to be convicted of rape, and was given the maximum sentence of life imprisonment. Pablo McCabe, who has since died, was sentenced to 12 years.
The Court of Criminal Appeal quashed the convictions in July 1999, and in November of that year the DPP issued an unprecedented statement on the matter, acknowledging that they were entitled to be presumed innocent of all charges.
